You Only Live Once (21 page)

We managed to get on a flight back on Friday, 23 April, and I saw the doctor the following day. The scan revealed that I had nine eggs and the doctor said that ideally she wanted to see a few more grow. I felt disappointed. If only I had been able to fly back on time, she could have adjusted the medication and I would have been able to produce more eggs. The doctor increased the hormone dose and when I went to see her again on the Monday she adjusted it again. By now I was on two injections and the second really hurt. It was a much thinner needle and it stung.

At this point, Alex and I were still debating about whether to put in two embryos or one. The doctor had recommended we put two in, but we had been worried that might mean twins. And while I knew I wanted more children – I’d love to have another four, in fact – having twins would be difficult to manage with three other children, especially with Harvey’s special needs. But, as it turned out, I didn’t really have a choice. The doctor examined the lining of my womb and told me that how many children I could have would really depend on the strength of this. The two Caesareans I’ve had have already weakened the lining – the same would be true of any woman, not just me. The doctor explained that she could just implant one embryo and I could go on to have the baby, but that might be the last baby I could ever have. And, of course, with two embryos there was a greater chance of a successful pregnancy. It was a lot to take on board, but Alex and I ended up deciding that we would have two embryos implanted.

So on Wednesday we returned to the clinic – I was having the eggs removed under anaesthetic, Alex producing a sperm sample. I had my usual panic about needles but before I was given the anaesthetic we all had a giggle because, just as Alex was about to go into the room next door to do what was required of him, all these moans and groans started coming from his phone. He had accessed some porn to assist with the sample business but couldn’t work out how to turn down the volume on his phone. He was really embarrassed. Everyone one else thought it was funny – I guess there’s not much that fazes doctors and nurses who work with couples trying for a baby . . . But then it was my turn to be embarrassed when the nurse told me that I had to lie back and put my legs into the stirrups at the side of the bed – this in a room with three other people in it. ‘This is so degrading.’ I exclaimed, ‘I didn’t even give birth like this! You’re going to have to give me the anaesthetic and then put my legs in that position while I’m out of it. I really can’t do it in front of you!’

Three days later I was due back at the clinic, this time for the doctor to put the embryos back into my uterus. ‘If you want me to come with you, I’ll come,’ Alex told me. ‘If not, I’ll go training.’ Deep down, of course I wanted him to come with me; I wanted him by my side for every single stage of the fertility treatment as we were doing this to have a baby together. But I replied, ‘It’s up to you. Everyone is different. But I know that if I was a man in this situation, I would be there for my partner. But if you don’t want to come, you don’t have to.’

Sometimes I think I am my own worst enemy because I should have been open with him about how I felt. I should have told him that I wanted him to be with me. Instead, because I had seemed so casual, Alex said that he would go training. I tried to tell myself that this was OK, that I would be fine on my own, but I was a bit gutted. This hopefully was the start of a new life, one we had created together.

As I drove to the clinic on my own I tried to tell myself not to get pissed off that Alex wasn’t with me, but I was upset and hurt. He shouldn’t have had to ask if I wanted him to come with me, it should have been obvious. I often do little tests on men. I don’t know why but it’s something I’ve always done, and then I remember how they reacted and store it up for future use. This had been a little test for Alex, to see if he would support me. Because of his reaction, I thought, ‘If he’s not going to come with me to watch our embryos being implanted, which is a big deal, imagine what he will be like when I have the baby. Will he be there for me? Will he give me the support I need?’

At the clinic I was able to see the embryos magnified on the screen – they were like two little bubbles as the doctor sucked them into a syringe – an incredible sight. Then the doctor put the embryos into me via a catheter, which was painless. The doctor jokingly said that I could sneeze, I could do anything, the embryos were not going to fall out. As I left the clinic I felt a surge of excitement as I thought, ‘I’m pregnant!’ And in a way I was, because now I had the embryos inside me all they had to do was grow.

Alex called me soon afterwards and told me that his mum had just had a go at him for not being with me at the clinic, and that she had told him that he should have been with me every step of the treatment. ‘I didn’t realise that I should have been there with you, I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Your mum’s right,’ I thought, ‘she’s got heart.’ ‘Yes, I would have liked you with me Alex, but you weren’t.’ I played it cool again, telling him the procedure had gone well and that I had seen the two embryos. I don’t think Alex had realised how vulnerable I felt or what I’d expected of him. I already knew men and women had different feelings about pregnancy from my past experiences. I don’t think the reality of having a child actually hits men until the baby is born, because it hasn’t been them who have carried the baby for nine months. Maybe having fertility treatment was the same. Because the treatment mainly involved things happening to me and my body, it wasn’t such an emotional process for Alex.

I definitely felt this was a time when I needed my partner by my side to support me, but I also knew that I was bad at letting people in and telling them how I really felt. Even when I was doing the injections, I wouldn’t let on to Alex what a big deal it was. Though the truth is, it was! I really wanted a baby, and I was injecting myself, which is one of my worst nightmares. But I would try to appear casual about it, and so I would do the injection while he was in the bath or relaxing on the bed and checking his messages. And all along I wished he had been more supportive, had asked me if I was OK, had cuddled me to make me feel better. I suppose I was testing him, thinking that it was a good chance to see how he really felt about me. I had told him just before we started the fertility treatment that this was a new journey for me, and that although I’d had children, I’d never had this treatment before with anyone. I suppose I was telling him that he didn’t have anyone else to compare himself with. But I did wish I could have expressed my feelings more fully so that Alex would have seen I needed more support. I didn’t like what I was having to do to myself; I didn’t like the fact that my body was changing and knowing that I wasn’t yet pregnant, knowing that I might not even get pregnant this time. I’m the kind of person who, even when something is really bothering me, will make out that I am fine when I’m not. So I probably have to take the blame for Alex not knowing how vulnerable I felt – because I didn’t show him.

For now we just had to wait. I couldn’t have a bath for five days or have sex for a week. In twelve days’ time I would do a test and we would know if the pregnancy had taken. I felt quite optimistic for the first seven days. I convinced myself that I would be pregnant and that most likely I would be having twins. Because of that I didn’t care about feeling so bloated, uncomfortable and unattractive. If I was pregnant then none of those things mattered. I was dying to do the clearblue test to find out.

For the first days I held on to the feeling of optimism, but then the waiting really got to me. And on top of being anxious about whether I was pregnant or not, throughout this time negative stories about me continued to appear. Our lovely holiday in Egypt was described as ‘the honeymoon from hell’. As it was coming up to a year since Pete and I split up, comparisons were made between how his life was after our break-up and how mine was. And Pete always came out better, that he was happy and successful in his new life while I was pining for my old one, which wasn’t true. And the press had also been saying that I was having fertility treatment. I was really upset that they had got hold of this – it was so personal, so private. What right did they have to keep digging away at Alex and me?

I have no idea how the story came out. I can only assume that the paps had seen us coming out of the fertility clinic. I had stopped getting the papers, but every now and then I would see the headlines or someone would tell what had been written and it really got to me. What had I done to deserve this? Celebrities who’ve been caught taking drugs haven’t received the treatment I’ve had in the press; footballers who’ve cheated on their wives haven’t been portrayed in the negative way I constantly seem to be. Pete walked out on me and I was destroyed by the press for an entire year. Why couldn’t they accept that I was happy and settled in my new life with Alex? I felt so drained by it all, I started to feel the weight of all the past year’s bad press crushing down on me. And now, waiting to find out whether I was pregnant or not, I felt incredibly vulnerable, didn’t know how much more of it I could take.

I broke down in front of Alex and my mum one morning in early May. I had tried so hard to stay strong. I was worried that if I didn’t appear to be strong, that if I did break down and need to see a therapist, it could be said that I was unstable and my children might be taken away from me. I knew I had to do something, knew I had to take a stand against those parts of the press that had written such lies about me. And with that in mind, I decided I would instruct a solicitor to start building a case against those publications that had blatantly done so.

But as the emotions caught up with me, I started experiencing stomach cramps. A few hours later I discovered I was bleeding. A wave of shock and disappointment went through me. I phoned the doctor and she told me that it didn’t look like good news, but that I should have an early night and bed rest. Alex was really supportive then and I felt he was there for me. That night we looked on the website and read about other women’s experiences. There were some reassuring stories from women who’d had bleeding early on in their pregnancy and feared they had lost the baby, then gone on to give birth successfully. I wanted to feel hopeful but as the bleeding continued I knew that the chances were not good. The following day the bleeding seemed to get heavier, then it stopped. Maybe I was still pregnant? But the day after that it started up again. I did a pregnancy test, feeling in my heart that I already knew the outcome, and sure enough it was negative.

Alex and I were both very upset. We had been so hopeful, so excited about the prospect of having a baby, and now all our dreams were dashed. We went back to see the doctor, to discuss what might have happened and what the way forward was. She thought it likely that the pregnancy hadn’t gone ahead because we were stranded abroad and I couldn’t get back in time for her to increase the medication, combined with the stress that being stranded had caused. We would have to wait two more months before we could start another course of treatment. But before that the doctor was going to scan me and give me hormone boosters, to see if I could get pregnant naturally. She felt that there was no reason why we shouldn’t manage that for ourselves. So, upset as we were, I did feel that there was hope. Once again I read about other women’s experiences. They had all been through so much; some of them were on their fourth or fifth cycle of fertility treatment and hadn’t given up, they were still being positive. I really admired their courage and sympathised with anyone who was trying for a baby. I knew how lucky I was already to have three beautiful children. While Alex didn’t yet have a biological child, he was still part of a family with kids, and I was sure we would have a baby together one day. If we weren’t successful in our attempts then we would adopt.

* * *

A few weeks later, at the end of May, the KP Baby range was launched. I had long wanted to bring out a range of babywear, adding my own unique touch of sparkle and glamour to baby garments. It was very important to me that it was all of high quality while also remaining affordable. I had been offered the chance to sell it from a major department store but that would have meant charging more for the items as the store would want their cut. So I decided to sell the products exclusively online at more reasonable prices.

I didn’t find it hard being around babies since I had found out that I was not pregnant. And if I saw a pregnant woman I wasn’t going to wish that it was me. It was their happy moment, I wanted them to enjoy it. I’m always broody anyway! Even though I hate being pregnant because I feel so physically uncomfortable, the feeling of excitement outweighs anything bad because I am so excited about the imminent arrival of my new baby. I absolutely love newborns: love their smell, their skin, love bathing them and dressing them in their sleep suits. But when I appeared at the Baby Show in Birmingham to promote my baby range, being around all those infants made me remember just what hard work caring for them can be. I think you forget once your children are past the baby stage how difficult those early years are – the crying, the feeding, the sleepless nights. But I love the baby stage, and if my body can handle having four more children, I will definitely have them.

Besides the launch I had our wedding blessing to look forward to on 3 July. I’d had offers from celebrity magazines. They had contacted my management, wanting to know what the theme was and which celebrities I was inviting. I’d told my management to go back to the magazines and tell them that this was a simple wedding blessing. It was not a celebrity event geared towards the press. It was what a wedding blessing should be – it would be about Alex and me and our families and friends celebrating. We were not going to live our lives purely for the benefit of celebrity magazines, end of.

Alex and I were filming the run-up to the blessing, the ceremony itself and our honeymoon in Thailand for a three-part special for ITV called
Katie and Alex: For Better, For Worse
. As we both enjoyed the filming and got on so well with my production company crew, it really didn’t feel like work and wasn’t stressful at all – it was fun. I had said all along that I didn’t want to work with Alex, didn’t want us to film a reality show together – I don’t want any repetition of the Katie and Peter experience – but because this was about our wedding, of course we both had to be filmed. They could hardly just film the bride! But apart from the wedding special, I was determined that I would have my own reality show, which Alex would be in from time to time, just as the kids are if they’re around, and he would have his own TV show on fighting, but it would never be the full-time Katie and Alex Show. Alex is very like me when it comes to filming. He can only be himself, and I like that about him.